A long standing challenge for radio systems in general, and aircraft communication systems in particular, is management of high-powered transmitters located in close proximity to sensitive receivers. Such close proximity of transmitters and receivers often causes interference, a condition generally labeled as co-site interference. A commonly employed method to manage co-site interference is to physically separate the transmit antennas from the receive antennas as much as possible, as well as to shield, isolate, and separate transmit and receive electronics that are simultaneously operating. However, even with the best physical separation offered on a platform like an aircraft, it is not uncommon for a receiver to be interrupted or affected by a co-site transmitter, especially those operating on a relatively nearby frequency.
An additional increasingly important problem in avionics voice communications is congestion, where there is so much voice communication activity that it is difficult for users in the area of an airport to access a particular communication channel. While it is important for the flight crews in all aircraft to be able to hear and talk to Air Traffic Control and the flight crew of every other aircraft in the vicinity of an airport, busy airports may have so many aircraft in the area that there is insufficient capacity on the single channel for all of the communications to be completed.
A contributing factor to the undesired co-site interference is the uncoordinated nature of receive and transmit operations. Federated communication subsystems are commonly employed in avionics communication systems and often provide each avionics function with its own processor thereby allowing each processor to essentially work independently. Further, such communication subsystems typically require the flight crew to be the integrator of data and the manager of all of the supporting subsystems. Thus, the independent nature of a federated communication system limits its capabilities, since it does not allow receive and transmit operations of multiple waveforms to be simultaneously coordinated and managed.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for coordinating receive and transmit operations of multiple simultaneous waveforms thereby providing an integrated system for managing the operations, and thus reducing interference between a transmitter located in close proximity to a receiver. Furthermore, it would be desirable to utilize the available capacity of a particular voice channel more efficiently without requiring a change to the existing ground or aircraft infrastructure.